Airtel, Idea and Vodafone vs Jio: Round II
NEWDELHI: Even before the dust settles on the war over promotional offers, another one is set to break out between India’s top three telcos and Reliance Jio, this time over call termination charges.
At a workshop held by sector regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Tuesday, Jio officials proposed scrapping of interconnection user charges (IUC), while Bharti Airtel Ltd, Idea Cellular Ltd and Vodafone India Ltd sought to raise them.
For every mobile phone call, the telco that originates the call pays 14 paise to the one which receives the call, called interconnect user charges. On a net basis, established operators with more users and bigger networks tend to earn more from IUC, while newer ones find it a burden.
Jio proposed zero charges, while the other three presented their cost structures to press for a hike in IUC to at least 30 paise, two persons present at the meeting said, requesting anonymity.
Smaller operators maintained that Trai should not change IUC charges.
Jio says its cost of servicing a call is next to zero and hence it proposed a so-called ‘bill and keep’ model, in which companies only keep record of incoming calls on their network but don’t raise any demand from other operators.
Emails sent to Jio, Vodafone, Idea and Airtel seeking comments remained unanswered till press time.
The top three telcos are of the view that interconnection capacities provided by one telco to another involve costs, for which a company should be fairly compensated. “Some operators said reduce the charges, some said increase them, some also requested to maintain it at current levels,” said RS Sharma, chairman, Trai. He did not reveal details.